Embodiments of the present invention relate to video games, and more particularly relate to techniques for establishing and reestablishing associations between users of game devices.
In recent years, the proliferation of broadband Internet access has prompted video game hardware manufacturers such as Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft to incorporate networking capabilities into their video game devices. For example, both the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, portable game devices manufactured by Nintendo and Sony respectively, have built-in support for 802.11b wireless communication. As a result, an ever increasing number of video game titles are being developed to support networked gaming functions that take advantage of the capabilities integrated into these game devices.
One feature included in several network-enabled video games is an association, or “friends,” list. An association list is a list of other game players (i.e., virtual “friends” or “associates”) that a user of a game device may interact with online (e.g., via an infrastructure or ad hoc-based network). Such interactions may include for instance, chatting with the other game players in a text or voice-based interface, or engaging the other game players in cooperative or adversarial online gameplay. Merely by way of example, the Xbox 360 game console manufactured by Microsoft supports a type of friends list functionality through Microsoft's “Xbox Live” online service.
Typically, an association list includes association information that uniquely identifies each associate on the list. This information may include, for example, a user name for each associate, and/or a network address of the game device used by each associate. The association information is then used to establish/re-establish associations with the associates when the owner of the list goes online. In current implementations, this association information is stored in a rewritable nonvolatile memory resident on the game device/console. For instance, the Xbox 360 is capable of storing friends list information to a local hard disk or local flash memory unit.
However, certain types of game devices may not have access to locally-resident, rewritable nonvolatile memory. In particular, portable game devices are often designed to fit a low cost, low power, and/or small form factor profile. As result, nonvolatile memory such as a hard disk or rewritable flash memory may be too costly, too power-hungry, and/or too bulky to integrate into such devices.
In such cases, a user of the game device that lacks rewritable nonvolatile memory may manually keep track of information identifying her associates, and then enter this information into her game device every time she wishes to interact with a particular associate. However, this approach is cumbersome and becomes unworkable if the user has more than a handful of associates on her list.
Another workaround is to store the association information in a rewritable nonvolatile memory resident on a game medium communicatively coupled with the game device. By way of example, the Nintendo DS uses game media known as game cards that often include a small amount of rewritable flash memory (or an EEPROM). However, simply storing and retrieving association information from game medium-resident memory (without any further logic) necessarily ties the association information a specific game medium. If, for example, the user of the game device switches the game medium for another one, of if the memory resident on the game medium is erased, the associations between the user and her associates cannot be reestablished.